As usual, come the weekend, I begin thinking about what next week’s column should be.
What often happens is that someone I am talking with will tell me about an interesting wildlife encounter they had, and that becomes the spark that ignites my next story.
Recently, a friend told me about seeing a red fox and five young foxes hanging out near his shed in the backyard. A day or so later, the mother fox and now six young foxes were seen hanging out and frolicking in the same location.
What an interesting encounter.
It appears that they may have denned under the shed, and continued sightings are likely to occur.
After hearing about this mother fox and her young, I decided to look into those early days of being a young red fox, and here are some interesting things I’ve found.
As you probably already know, a red fox is called a “red” fox because of the orangey-red color over most of its body. What I found interesting, though, is that a newborn red fox isn’t that orange or red color, but rather they are a fuzzy, gray ball weighing about 4 ounces and about the size of a mole; they do, however, have the white tip at the end of the tail. It’s about 2 weeks before the kits open their eyes and begin to take an active role in their new world. The kits are not ready to eat solid food until they are about a month old. In these early days, the female spends most of her time near the den site with the kits while the male hunts and brings food to the den site.
Another question that came to mind as I talked with my friend about the foxes in his backyard was how many young does a female give birth to? Litters range in size from 4 to 10, with six being the average size litter. The young do not leave the den area until about mid-July or a bit later, so it sounds like my friend with the foxes out back may have company for a while longer.
As the kits spend more and more time outside the den, their coats begin to change from charcoal gray to a light tan. As the young foxes move into the fall months, they take on the typical orange and red color that we usually see.
Some other interesting things I learned about red foxes are that their near relative — the gray fox, can climb trees, but apparently the red fox can’t. It also appears that red foxes are less afraid of people than gray foxes, and they will often inhabit more heavily populated areas.
My friend, who now has a family of foxes living and romping in his backyard, seems to bear this out.
In my research, I also found that in Lancaster County, a pair of red foxes raised a litter of young in a hole under a large brush pile that was only 100 feet from a well-used tennis court.
While I have never discovered an active red fox den, I have on occasion seen red foxes while hunting or roaming the countryside. Since we put trail cameras out a couple of years ago, it’s not unusual to see a red fox passing by fairly often. They are nocturnal, so daytime sightings are less likely. Keep your eyes open, who knows what might end up in your backyard?
